The Forty-first Day

The morning came, and the sun bleached the hills and the distant city in a white and holy light.  He raised his head from his pillowing forearm, put a hand to his waking eyes and rubbed the grit from their corners.  The air was bright and clean and filled his lungs with a vigour he had not felt in forty days.  He stood to his feet and stretched out his arms, yawned and coughed and stepped out into the glorious presence of day.  His eyes came to rest on the city in the sun, glistening white and waking, and he loved her.  

Hunger reappeared in his belly.  He placed his hand to his stomach and felt it tremble and growl.  As he took a step toward the mountain path, he glanced at the ground.  He saw something crisp and white across the path.  It looked as if it had risen up from the ground itself in the night, and he bent low to inspect it.

“What is it?”

He reached out and broke a thin, crispy piece from the sparse grass in which it lay.  He sniffed it, and placed it on his tongue.

“What is it,” he said, and smiled.

He sat down there on the path, and had breakfast for the first time in forty-one days.

Quoting Deuteronomy to the Devil, Part Three

The night sky shone with a million stars, and the city below added to the number ten thousand of its own.  He shivered, pulled his knees close to his chest and watched the distant windows glow with a warm, orange light, flickering with quiet life.   Each window was a story, a chapter, a verse, in the telling of Jerusalem’s tale.  The city on the hill lay arrayed with these stories, these jewels, and he watched her with longing.

He could hear his breath as he sat at the mouth of his cave.  The mountain on which he now sat was only one of a great multitude that rolled across the countryside, and it sang now the same song with the great chorus of hills.  Insects, small and hidden, cricked and chirruped their night sounds.  A dark breeze rolled and sighed through the nooks and caves of the hillside, and these sounds together created a deep and holy silence.    

He was tired, exhausted, perhaps more physically weary than he would be for years to come, but this night was not for sleeping.  He was meant to meet someone here, and he waited, eyes fixed on the glimmering city. He remembered a psalm, and it silently played on his lips.

There was a rustling of brush, a flapping of wings unseen, and then, a presence.  Invisible, quiet, but there.  He felt it sitting next to him.  He could hear its voice in his ear, close and still, even and smooth as stone.

beautiful isn’t it?

“Yes,” he said softly.

i love to watch them at night.  i can see them better.

“I know.”

A cloud drifted close.  He could almost hear it touching the mountain.

you love them.

“Yes.”

He rubbed his face, cleared his eyes, stroked his beard.

how much do you love them?

He let the crickets answer.

you can have them, if you want them.  they are a burden to me.  every one of them.

He clasped his hands to his ankles.  The breeze ran through his sleeves.  He steadied his gaze.

i want to show you something.  will you let me?

He sighed.  “Yes.”

There was another flapping of wings, and he felt the wind rush past his ears.  He was still staring at the same city, but he seemed also to be looking past it, looking into its very soul, as indeed a city must have one, and he saw it with overwhelming clarity.  It moved and sighed as a living thing, pulsing and breathing, its people the blood in its veins, their work the air in its lungs, their sins the shame in its dreams.

He saw farther and deeper.  He saw all of Israel, and beyond.

He saw people.

He saw a boy crouched over a brown puddle, his face as grimy as the water’s.  He felt the boy’s stomach rumble.  He felt the boy tighten the rope around his waist.  He felt the hunger barely abated.  He saw a king at table.  He felt the fullness in the king’s belly as he ate still more.  The boy clenched his stomach against another pang of hunger; the king doubled over and vomited on the floor, an obscene pool on gilded stone.

He saw a father, calloused hands covering tired eyes, drunk with despair because he failed to feed his family.  He felt the fear in his mind, felt the tears burn his eyes.  And he saw the man for whom this father toiled, indulging his daughter with another soon-forgotten gift.

He saw a woman– no, a girl– bent low before an old man.  He saw the man’s face writhe with pleasure.  He saw him mash the money into her face, spit on her, and leave.  He saw the girl washing herself, and felt the shame dwelling in the pit of her innermost place.

He saw more.

A man impaled on a sword.

A child holding his dead mother’s hand.

He saw a flag.  A nation.  A kingdom.

And he saw the lines of power and impotence that connected them all.

He felt – yes, he knew – every trail of selfishness between the two fathers, every flayed and bleeding bond from the shamed girl to the old man, every cord of greed and want that joined the starving boy with the gluttonous king.  He saw the terrible and fragile web that joined them all.  And in this, he saw every kingdom that ever was and ever would be.  He felt within himself a desire beyond anything he had yet felt.  He wanted to feed the child at the table of the king.  He wanted the old man to feel the girl’s foot upon his neck.  The desire to set all these things right, to make right every wrong, to take control, to tear apart the web with one effortless sweep of his right hand, was almost overwhelming.  He felt a hunger greater than the need for bread, a yearning greater than the want of glory.  With his whole being, he ached for justice.

Again the voice came to him.

their suffering is no pleasure to me.  they have given me power, but i can hand it over to whomever i choose.  i can give you all of this.  the power to remake it as you want it to be.  i know it burdens you.  i can see your tears.

He opened his eyes to the night.  Jerusalem lay still before him, its lights diminishing, its people sleeping.  

the way to justice is not as you think it is.  it need not be so slow in coming.  

He saw how easy it could be.  

you came to bring justice to the earth, did you not?  be their king.

He saw the eyes of the boy, of the father, of the girl.  They pleaded to him.  

will you bring justice by obscurity?  will you right these wrongs by living as a beggar?  do something!  be the king they are pleading for!

He was taken again to the kingdoms of the world.  He saw the starving boy laying lifeless on the ground.  He saw the girl, now a woman, taking yet another man to her bed.  He saw the drunken father alone and weeping in a filthy room.  He saw the eyes of the weeping orphan, still holding his mother, and he saw the soldier cut off the boy’s hand.  

The voice of the unseen one seemed to weep.  o justice, come quickly…

He could see himself as king.  He saw the poor fed, and the wealthy reduced to tears.  He saw peace.  He saw the greatest kingdom the world had yet seen.  And one thing more.  He saw this great kingdom, a kingdom of the world, a kingdom established by power, and it was built upon a spider’s web.  He saw, as clearly as the moon above, what such a kingdom would require of him:  He was kneeling before the one who lived within that web.  He was bent low before the drooling maw of the spider.  And he heard at last the words behind the words; he heard with perfect clarity the demands of his tempter:

all these i shall give to you, if you prostrate yourself and worship me.

He stood, and his voice peeled like thunder into the night wind.  “Away from me, Satan!  It is written: The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve!”

The presence was gone, and holiness returned to the sacred night.  He sighed deeply, and tears ran down his cheeks, through his beard, onto the collar of his robe.  He remembered again the Psalm he had begun, and spoke it low and secretly into the night.

    Jerusalem… The mountains surround her, and the Lord surrounds his people,
        both now and forever.  
    The sceptre of the wicked will not prevail in the land given to the just,
       lest the just themselves turn their hands to evil.  
    Do good, Lord, to the good, to those who are upright of heart.  
    But those who turn aside to crooked ways may the Lord send down with the wicked.  
    Peace upon Israel.

He lay down, closed his eyes, and slept as a man at the doorstep of God.

Quoting Deuteronomy to the Devil, Part Two

Forty days is a very long time.  A fortieth night was still to come.

He stood now on the parapet of the temple, his arms resting on the ledge of the high walkway that stood overlooking the courts. He had been drawn here from the desert, but he had not yet left the wilderness.

To anyone passing by, he looked like a beggar; people gave him ample space when they passed.  He had cleansed himself in the mikveh as he entered, but his clothes were still tattered and unkempt, his hair and beard tangled despite his attempts to groom them, his skin drawn and windburned.  

The world seemed to be at once distant and in strange clarity in this state, as if he could see just an inch beyond earth and flesh and bone.  He gazed down at the bustle below him, and at the Holy of Holies above.  It loomed large and silent and shining in the midday sun, and it seemed to stand over the people like a beneficent king, blessing them with arms open wide.  Perhaps Herod had meant this temple for his own glory, but its beauty transcended human achievement, and its white marble walls seemed to gleam with the sunlight of heaven itself.  

He remembered coming here as a boy and seeing it for the first time.  He had been enraptured by its beauty, by its feeling of immensity.  But it was something more than its physical power which stirred his sense of wonder, something which stirred him now even more deeply than it had then.  It was the palpable presence of God.  He felt it as certainly as the warmth and light of the sun on his chest.  He could almost taste it in the air and on his tongue, like an electrical storm, but sweeter: like electricity and sugar.

When he was a boy, he had lingered here for three days, basking in this presence.  Yes, the Lord was present everywhere, but he was here, too.  Somehow, he was more  here; like a man is more completely present when resting in his own home.  Truly this was his Father’s house, his Father’s home.  Truly he rested here.  And now this home was full of guests: sons and daughters that walked busily about in the presence of God, unaware at worst, dimly aware at best, of the holiness that surrounded them.

As he watched these people now, his heart began to break for them, these sons and daughters.  An old man standing silently at prayer, his lips moving with the words of a psalmist.  A mother holding the hand of her son, the way his own mother had held his.   Even the sly, middle-aged business man hawking his doves seemed to call out to him in some unutterable language of love and need.

He was exhausted.  He was hungry.  And he loved them.  He loved them and hungered for them more than he now hungered for bread.  He tasted salt upon his lips, and realized that tears were running down his face.  He wept for them, these sons and daughters; these sheep without a shepherd.

Into his thoughts came a picture.  A shepherd’s staff was in his hand, and the people were gathered at his feet, content, at peace, secure.

if you are the son of god, show them who you really are.  let them see a miracle.  let them see you in glory.

Another picture came to his mind, of falling from where he stood, of being caught in the invisible arms of a thousand attending angels, of being lifted to the heights of the Holy of Holies, sharing in its glory, absorbing its glory, reveling in his sonship.

give them a sign.  throw yourself down, and stand upon the temple!  it is written, ‘he will command his angels concerning you’.  ‘with their hands they will support you lest you dash your foot against a stone’.  if you really are his son, if he truly loves you, your father will catch you!  and they will see!  if you are the son of god, then don’t prove it by your power, as with the stones.  that was wrong.  of course that was wrong.  prove it by your father’s power.  just let yourself fall.  for the love of them, show them your father’s power.  show them that the father loves you!

The tracks of his tears had dried on his cheeks.  He could see it so clearly, and something in him longed for this, to revel in his Father’s love in the presence of his people, to show them just how much the Father loved him.  But he remembered Deuteronomy.  He remembered Moses.  He remembered water from a rock at a place called Massah – a place called The Test.  Surely, water from a rock for a thirsty people was right.  But Moses himself had been wrong.  He had doubted the Father’s patience for his people.  He had doubted the Father’s love. For that, the servant of God had not lived to enter the Promised Land.

He could feel now what was wrong with this picture of glory.  Indeed, he would be lifted up before these sons and daughters.  Indeed he would draw them to himself.  Indeed his Father would affirm his love for his Son.  But it would not be in a display of the Father’s power.  It would be in a display of the Son’s restraint, his humility.  In this, in him, the Father would be well pleased.  In this the Father would glory.

He spoke now, from the depth of his spirit through his ragged throat.  “Again it is written: ‘You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test, as you did at Massah.’ ”

His arms trembled under his weight.  He turned from the ledge.  He began to walk, and his parched lips, like the old man’s below him, moved in a silent prayer.

“For the Lord your God, who is with you, is a fervent lover.”

Quoting Deuteronomy to the Devil

It was his fortieth day without food.

He was alone. After the first few days, the hunger pangs had left him, but now, as he began the long walk home, the thought of food was beginning to make his stomach rumble. He stopped and sat upon a rock, resting for a moment in the morning sun. He clenched his hands together, raising his eyes to the rugged horizon of the mountains. The sun rested a good distance above them.

He had been meditating for forty days now on the fifth book of the Law, on the sermons of Moses.

“Remember...”

His stomach rumbled, and the thought of food overtook his prayers. He closed his eyes again.

“Remember how for forty years the Lord, your God...”

He winced at another painful rumbling.

“...has directed all your journeying in the desert...”

The rumbling opened his eyes in exasperation. He took a calming, slow breath, and continued.

“...so as to test you by affliction, and find out if you would keep his commandments.”

The pangs kept coming. He tried to collect his thoughts as his eyes scanned the stony ground. His gaze came to rest on a stone, and a thought seemed to come out of nowhere.

bread.

The world seemed suddenly silent. It was fleeting, barely whispered, but that single word seemed to drown out everything, even his prayers. He stared at the stone.

“No.” He said. “He let you be afflicted with hunger... ”

bread. make this bread.

He looked upon the stone again.

“No,” he said again, and carried on. “He afflicted you with hunger, and then fed you with manna.”

Pain and weakness shot through him from his belly to his fingertips.

forget manna. you're god. make this bread.

He spoke forcefully, slowly. “Remember. He fed you with manna, to show you that Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord.”

He closed his eyes. He opened them. The stone remained a stone.

He took a deep breath.

The pangs remained, and so did his resolve, as he stood and began to walk.

“The Lord, your God, disciplines you,” he said, “even as a man disciplines his son.”